


Always You (The Best Part Of Me)

by space_canada



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - High School, Internalized Homophobia, Long-Distance Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-13
Updated: 2015-07-30
Packaged: 2018-04-09 05:08:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4335071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/space_canada/pseuds/space_canada
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's all about the competition, until suddenly, it's not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [foldednotes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/foldednotes/gifts).



> I would like to start with a HUGE apology for how incredibly late this fic is. My only excuse is that 2015 has been a certified pain in the ass so far. I would like to sincerely thank the people that organised this exchange - both for doing a stellar job and for being so patient and understanding. 
> 
> This fic is for foldednotes, based on the prompts Niall/Zayn - long distance, getting drunk together and college roommates. The roommates and the getting drunk doesn't actually happen exclusively within the pairing and I also pulled in a prompt about competition which you gave for a different couple. I really hope you like it anyway!

There must, objectively speaking, have been a time when music wasn’t the most important thing in his life, but if there was, Zayn doesn’t recall it. As far back as he can remember, all that has really mattered is music and all he’s ever wanted to do is sing. His mum likes to say he started to sing before he could talk and whether that’s true he doesn’t know. What he does know is that there are certainly a high enough number of horrible home videos to support the claim.

It’s also through music that he first meets Niall.

Zayn doesn’t have many friends going through school. He’s not a social pariah or anything – there are people he sits with at lunch and he hangs out with the theatre kids in the performing arts centre after school and as he gets older, he can’t help but notice that girls giggle if he catches their eyes. But. On the whole, it all just makes him uncomfortable; the spotlight of attention raw over his skin. At the end of the day, there’s a space carved out in his head, made of music and art and quiet, and that’s where he’s happiest.

His mum, however, has other ideas. She worries, is the problem, and for a while they engage in a quiet battle of attrition, whereby his mum tries to make him engage with other people his own age and Zayn slinks off to his room and draws comics and listens to Led Zeppelin on repeat with the curtains shut. If it’s not music, he tells her, he’s not interested.

It’s this statement that turns out to be his downfall. Well, that and the drama club at school.

They put on a play. Or rather, they put on a musical. Only the musical has been written by the English department who, in general, aren’t all that great at the actual music part. Mr Harris, Head of Music, is drafted in to save the day and he writes the entire score, with the exception of the key number. And this is where Zayn’s problems start because the school puts on a competition, to compose the soundtrack for the main song.

His mum is ecstatic. Zayn is less so. The problem though, is that he said if it wasn’t music he wasn’t interested, but this? This _is_ music. His mum’s got him and she knows it. So he caves. He gives it a go, sits in his room night after night, working on chords and key changes and harmonies. It surprises him, actually, just how into it he gets. He’s reluctant at first, doesn’t want to be writing for a school musical, of all things, but then the music hooks him and before long he’s consumed by the need for it to be _right_. He spends even more time on his own than before, but this time his mum doesn’t nag him and stops his sisters from barging in on him and eventually, it’s done. It’s done and it’s _good_.

He submits it for the competition with a quiet sense of confidence. He’s not trying to be a dick about it, he just knows his competition and it’s limited. The performing arts kids are the only ones who would enter a contest like this and none of them are composers. Not really.

They announce the winner in assembly one Monday morning. Zayn’s been sort of dreading this bit, because going up on stage in front of the entire school is possibly his worst nightmare.

It turns out, however, that he needn’t have worried. Because when Mr Davies, the Headmaster, turns the topic to the song-writing competition and says that it’s his great pleasure to announce a very talented young man as the winner, the name that follows isn’t Zayn’s.

Zayn isn’t that up on the names of everyone at school, but he knows who Niall Horan is. Partly because he’s loud and blond and very Irish, but mostly because he’s captain of the football team. As such, he’s got no business entering song-writing competitions and _absolutely_ no business winning them. He shouldn’t even know one end of a guitar from the other, for fuck’s sake.

The few days that follow are not a period of time that Zayn is particularly proud of. He does not lose with grace. In fact, he sulks – endlessly and dramatically - and begins a phase of wearing eyeliner to accentuate the point. He glares daggers at the back of Niall’s head in the corridors, relatively safe in the knowledge that Niall, who is always surrounded by the entire jock contigent of the school, doubtless has no idea at all who he is.

He’s consumed by both a raging jealousy and a terrible curiosity. And no, he is not being overly-dramatic, no matter what his mum says. He tries casually asking his friend, Colin, who plays the saxophone in the school orchestra, what Niall’s song is like. All he keeps picturing in his head is Niall, lounging back in his chair in maths, loudly snapping a wad of gum and twirling his ever-present baseball cap round and round. He can’t help but wonder how good this boy can possibly _be_.

Colin, who doesn’t seem to have quite grasped the importance of this question to Zayn’s mental health, shrugs. “S’alright,” he says. “Just a musical number really,” he pauses to consider. “Didn’t know Horan could write though. S’pose it’s quite impressive he managed to string two chords together.”

This is completely useless as an answer, so clearly the only course of action left to Zayn is to get involved in the musical and see for himself. He goes to see Mrs Winters - the art teacher - after school and volunteers to paint sets. It’s possible that he volunteers rather agressively – _demands_ might be a more accurate descriptor - but either way she hands him a set of blueprints and a tin of paintbrushes and sends him on his way with a slightly puzzled smile.

So then he’s stuck staying late after school everyday, painting endless tedious stretches of sky and buildings and trees, occasionally adding in little details to amuse himself and hoping that no one will notice. His mum, predictably, is thrilled by this new discovery of his school spirit and he doesn’t have the heart (or bad sense) to correct her.

Niall’s song is the big finale, so it takes them a good while to work around to rehearsing it. By the time they get there, the set painting is nearly finished and Zayn is starting to get slightly twitchy that his entire endeavour may have been for nothing.

He’s gloomily painting the last tree in his bit of the forest backdrop one Friday, when he finally hears the announcement he’s been waiting for. The orchestra has been practicing in their own separate rehearsals, so they know what they’re doing and now, apparently, all there is to do is add in the lyrics and draw the whole thing together with the scene. Zayn, itching with apprehension, dumps his paintbrush back in the bucket and slinks into the audience in order to get the full experience. As he does so, he notices out of the corner of his eye that Niall himself is there, straddling a chair in the back, separate from his teammates for once in his life. Zayn can’t decide whether the fact that Niall cares enough about his song to come and hear it’s very first performance makes him feel better about the whole scenario or worse.

Probably worse.

There’s a bit of faffing and rustling as everyone finds their marks and their song sheets and the orchestra settles down but finally they’re ready. The pianist strikes his first note, lets it hold and waver in the air for everyone to pitch to, the conductor counts a soft _one, two, three_ and then they play.

Zayn manages to hold onto his scepticism for approximately five seconds and then he’s gone. He doesn’t manage to make it back for a good half a minute after the last note dies away, even when the room immediately erupts into noise and applause and commentary. He’s somewhere else, born half by shock and half by sheer delight. Because if he ever had a question as to whether Niall knows what he’s doing, it’s been thoroughly answered. He’s good. He’s really good. There was a chord run in the middle of that song that Zayn might possibly wank to.

By the time Zayn gets over his shock enough to get back on his feet and head back over to his painting, everyone is preparing to run through the song again. The orchestra are rustling around and up on stage there seems to be some faff over blocking going on. Somewhat without his permission, Zayn’s eyes pan around the room to where Niall had been sitting.

He’s still there, sprawled back in his chair, fingers twitching against his thigh as though he wishes he were holding a guitar. Zayn wonders what it must feel like, to hear a group of musicians perform something that _you_ wrote, even if it is only the school orchestra. No one has ever sung any of his stuff but himself. He only realises that he’s staring when Niall looks up and all of a sudden, their eyes are meeting.

Zayn looks away fast, peering fixedly down at the paintbrush in his hand, but not before he sees Niall get up, long legs swinging around in his direction. Zayn dips the brush into green paint and pours far more concentration than is necessary into the painting of a patch of shrubbery. The distraction doesn’t work though, and he feels more than sees Niall come up behind him.

“Zayn, right?”

Niall’s accent is ridiculously Irish. Zayn wonders if it disappears when he sings – if he even _can_ sing, or whether writing is all he does. He wonders why Niall is talking to him, and how he knows his name when they’ve never so much as crossed paths before.

Then he realises he should probably say something in return.

“Right,” he says, keeping his voice as low and calm as he can manage. He doesn’t say anything else, doesn’t even fully turn to look at Niall.

“O-kay,” Niall says after a moment, and Zayn can easily imagine his eyebrows twitching up. He doesn’t blame him, can neither believe nor seem to prevent his rude behaviour.

After a few moments of agonising silence Niall moves away, out of Zayn’s peripheral vision. Zayn suspects he’s probably irreparably offended him and doesn’t have any idea how to feel about that.

The clap on his shoulder as Niall heads for the door shocks the hell out of him for the second time in ten minutes. He turns to look at Niall, can’t help himself.

Niall is walking backwards, baseball cap shoved up towards the back of his head. “Good chatting with you, mate,” he says, with a little grin. Then he nods at the tree Zayn has just finished painting. “Nice bird.”

The starling is one of Zayn’s little add-ins, woven into the backdrop both to mark the work as his own and stop himself going stir-crazy. It’s got a little top hat and a cane and until now, no one has noticed.

Defensive responses snap up in his throat but when he looks at Niall, the other boy just gives him a dorky double-handed gun salute and swings away.

Zayn turns back to his painting, unsure what to think or feel. So he does what he always does when he’s thrown off stride and immerses himself in his art.

He briefly considers painting over the starling, but in the end he can’t bring himself to. Instead he adds a few musical notes floating around its beak and then leaves it at that.

*-*-*-*-*

After the incident with the song writing contest, Zayn doesn’t encounter Niall again directly for a good few months. He says directly, because suddenly, he’s seeing the blond boy every fucking place he turns. If he didn’t know better, he’d think Niall was a twin.

Additionally and to his occasional shame, he still hasn’t really gotten over being beaten. Mr Harris had called him into his office the week after the final showing of the musical and congratulated him on his own submission. Just because he hadn’t won didn’t make his work any less of an achievement apparently, apart from the bit where that was obviously bullshit.

He only shares one class with Niall, which is maths, and to his own slight horror, he finds himself consciously trying to compete. He puts more effort into his homework and his revision than he ever has before and his marks take an abrupt upwards turn. Zayn has, during parents’ evenings past, been described as ‘mathematically lazy’ so he can probably forgive the surprise of both his teacher and his mum when he comes second from top in their latest modular exam. He doesn’t know what mark Niall got, but Katie Platt comes top in maths without fail and this process of logic means that Zayn has triumphed.

His fierce gloating is somewhat tapered by the fact that Niall obviously has no idea they are competing and likely doesn’t give a shit about maths anyway, but Zayn still carries a little hot coal of victory around that day, heating his belly whenever he thinks about it too closely.

In spite of that odd little snippet of interaction in the theatre, Niall shows no further noticeable interest in Zayn’s existence and it’s this that renders Zayn’s own obsession a bit inexplicable. He knows himself and knows that he tends to fixate on things, but he’s never become fixated on a person before, particularly a virtual stranger. If he’s honest, it’s not really even Niall himself that has monopolised his thoughts so completely – but the idea of beating him. Zayn doesn’t get it, but he can’t seem to get a grip on it and frankly, it’s starting to piss him off.

Part of him hopes that the long months of summer, separate from school and everyone involved with it, will sort him out. And it does, to an extent. Without Niall popping up around every damn corner, Zayn thinks about him less, but still occasionally, when he’s writing or singing or performing in the coffee shop in town, he’ll find himself thinking, _I wonder what Niall would think of this_ , or, _I wonder if this is better than Niall_.

He’s starting to think there’s something actually wrong with him, so when the autumn of a new school year rolls around and with it the school talent competition, he’s almost grateful. He’s never felt even the slightest urge to enter before, but now…well, now he and Niall are going to compete again but this time it won’t be over something for a musical and Zayn can sing something that’s _his_ , and he’s going to _win_.

And then, hopefully, once his stupid pride has sorted itself out, he can go back to being barely aware of Niall’s existence and focus on his university application. His personal statement isn’t going to write itself.

So he signs up for the talent competition and books as many slots as they’ll let him to practice in the music rooms at school and even lets his mum buy a ticket for the night itself. The song he chooses to sing is one of his oldest but still one of his favourites. It’s a ballad-type that shows off his range and it always gets extra-loud applause when he sings it at the coffee shop. He practices with dedication, going over and over the familiar notes, until three days before the show.

He’s in the music room that looks out over the sports field, just toying with the idea of calling it a day and heading home for the evening, when he chances a glance out of the window. A group of boys are playing football and without even having to look too closely, Zayn somehow knows that Niall is amongst them. He watches, transfixed, as they knock the ball back and forth, nothing too serious, just friends having a laugh. They’re all good – their school team is the best in the county – but to Zayn, Niall seems to obviously stand out. His passes are just that little bit more accurate, his footwork that little bit more sure.

When he finally wrenches his gaze away from the window, the clock tells him that he’s been staring for the better part of twenty minutes. Abruptly, he’s furious with himself and with Niall and with his inability to stop thinking about him when they aren’t even _friends_. Frustration wrenches through him and somewhere along the line, his brain starts trying to convert it to lyrics and runs of notes start to dance at the edge of his mind, just begging to be pinned down into melody.

Zayn abandons all thought of going home. He sits down and he writes.

*-*-*-*-*

Much later, an hour before the show is due to start, he’s regretting the decision immensely. He’s not really good with the spotlight, or with taking risks and it suddenly seems an immeasurably stupid idea to get up on stage in front of near enough the entirety of his peers and sing a song he only wrote two days ago.

It is, however, too late to back out now.

He’s the second act of the night and when he walks out onto the stage, there’s a brief moment where he genuinely thinks he might be sick. But then he gets a grip on himself, cues his backing track and starts to sing. It only takes a few lines and then he’s lost. He loses himself in lyrics about fascination, in notes edged with competition and a key change that rings with the frustration of not even being able to understand yourself.

For a few gloriously blank moments, he forgets the audience, forgets the nerves, forgets the competition with Niall. The quiet space of music and art in his head expands out until everything is encompassed. There’s a certain peace, Zayn finds, in performing.

When he’s done, when it’s over, he barely registers the applause – although he can see his mum in the front row, clapping harder than anyone, eyes suspiciously shiny. He feels a bit dazed.

He doesn’t bother to change clothes after, even though his shirt is sticking to his back, just climbs the stairs to the balcony where the acts that have already performed are allowed to watch the rest of the show. It’s only when he’s sitting down that Zayn realises that he doesn’t actually have any idea when in the schedule Niall - or indeed, anyone – is going to be performing. He was too distracted to bother checking.

The seat he’s chosen is down at the far end of the balcony, in the back corner. It’s shadowy and quiet and smells vaguely of old gym socks. The bench seat is hard, the waxed surface slightly sticky to the touch, but Zayn doesn’t particularly care. He focuses his eyes onto the stage, where a blond girl is playing a flute solo with more enthusiasm than delicacy, and settles into wait.

Niall doesn’t go after the blond girl. Instead a dark-haired boy Zayn thinks he might vaguely recognise from GCSE Physics butchers Van Morrisey. The applause is quite vigorous, possibly because everyone is so glad it’s over. The next act comes on, and that’s not Niall either.

Neither is the one after. Or the one after that. Zayn starts to get a uncomfortable twinge in his chest. It only increases as the evening ticks on, act after act and none of them are a blond football player.

Eventually, the lights come up and Mr Harris steps up on stage and Zayn realises with a horrible sinking sensation that it’s over. It’s over and Niall didn’t…well, he obviously didn’t even bother entering. Zayn should have checked the set list. He should have been a bit less distracted.

Up on stage Mr Harris starts a speech thanking them all for coming. Zayn can’t quite manage to hear him. There’s a funny bitter ache in his chest. All Niall’s lack of entry has done is confirm what Zayn secretly already knew. That this obssessive rivalry he’s managed to imagine up between them is entirely in his own head. And he already knew that. He did. But.

It sucks to have it confirmed is all.

He’s also suddenly embarrassed by the song he wrote. It was good and it was good enough to win but he regrets it. He feels like he’s revealed too much – written something that’s a bit too much of _him_ and he feels strangely raw. He wishes he could take the song back, re-wrap all the sentiments it represented and hide them away, have no-one have ever heard them. He knows, logically, that there’s no way anyone could possibly relate that song back to Niall – and Zayn is man enough to admit that, yes, he _wrote a song about him_ – but he just doesn’t even want those lyrics out there in the air.

He sits back in his seat and grinds his teeth. He’s confused and pissed off and uncomfortable.

He’s also, as much as he tries to ignore it, kind of disappointed he didn’t get to hear Niall sing.

*-*-*-*-*

Afterwards, once the results are in and everyone’s laughed and clapped and changed and cleared out, Zayn walks to the bus stop. His mum wanted to give him a lift home, but he’d insisted on walking. It’s a nice night, clean and crisp and Zayn sort of hopes that it might help sort his head out.

His mum lets him get away with it because he won. It’s a only a school talent show, but Zayn doesn’t have the heart to remind her of this. He gives her the trophy to take home in the car, sat in the passenger seat instead of him.

There’s no one at the bus stop, which is not a huge surprise at this time of night. The timetable suggests a twenty minute wait at least, so Zayn plugs himself into his iPod and tries to settle himself away from the world.

It doesn’t work as well as it usually does, but it works well enough that when a hand drops heavily onto his shoulder, he just about has a heart attack.

“ _Motherfu-_ ,” he’s on his feet in an instance, knocking the hand away and tearing out his earbuds, nearly removing half of his ear as he does so.

“Sorry, mate.” Niall is standing behind him, ever-present baseball cap on backwards and eyebrow firmly raised. He looks far too calm, given that Zayn feels about two steps from a coronary embolism.

“Are you trying to give me a fucking heart attack?” His tone is too sharp, heightened with the adrenaline and Zayn forces himself to take a step back, untangling the remainder of his headphones and taking a couple of deep breaths.

“Sorry,” Niall says again. He does not look as perturbed as Zayn would have liked. There’s a curl of amusement in the corners of his mouth. “You were in your own little world there.”

“Yeah,” Zayn says and then hesitates, brain suddenly void of anything else to say. Now that his fight-flight instinct has ebbed, he finds himself very thrown by the fact Niall is standing in front of him.

Luckily, Niall doesn’t seem as bothered. “Congratulations for tonight, mate,” he says, clapping Zayn on the back and grinning. “You were phenomenal out there.”

Zayn stares at him blankly. “You saw it?” he manages, after what feels like a couple of months of silence. Niall nods cheerfully and cracks his gum.

“Yup. My mum wanted to go. You were aces, bro, everyone thought so.”

 _Aces_ , _bro_ , Zayn mentally repeats and then wants to kick himself for spending _more than a year_ hung up on a boy who talks like an American frat rat. He’d much rather think about this than about the fact that Niall apparently _saw his performance_. He doesn’t know quite how he feels about that, but he suspects it might be mortified.

“Thanks,” he says, eventually. There’s nothing quite like putting your heart and soul into something, something that is ultimately quite personally revealing, and then finding out that the person at the root of it has been happily oblivious to you virtually the entire time.

He’ll blame what he says next on the frustration of this. “How come you didn’t enter?”

“Me?” Niall’s eyebrows fly up, although it’s difficult to tell whether it’s at the content of the question or the fact that Zayn has spoken at all.

“Yeah,” Zayn says, a little gruffly. “You’re good enough aren’t you?”

Niall shrugs and swivels his cap around to face the right way. “Nah. I’d have just embarrassed myself if I’d tried to compete with you.”

After the last eighteen months, an admission like this should be the sweetest thing Zayn’s ever heard. Instead it irritates him in it’s blatant untruthfulness.

“Bullshit,” he says, and the vehemence in his voice surprises both of them, if the way Niall takes a step backwards is any indication. “You won that song-writing contest for the musical last year.”

He’s blushing as soon as he says it, embarrassed both by his obvious emotion and the admission he remembers this at all.

Niall shrugs again. “Yeah, I guess,” he says. He pauses, looks a bit curious and – if Zayn didn’t know better, he’d almost say _hopeful_ -, “I didn’t think you’d remember that?”

Zayn stares fixedly at the peeling poster on the side of the bus stop. He shrugs, ears burning. “Whatever,” he says, aiming for cool and aloof and missing by a clear mile. “Shut up, you were good,” and then, because he has apparently lost any and all cool he once possessed, “you were better than me then.”

As soon as the words are out, he kind of wants the earth to swallow him whole. He’d never ever planned on admitting to Niall that he’d entered that competition.

To give him credit, Niall doesn’t do anything more than produce a kind of surprised eyebrow twitch. “You entered?” he asks. “Would have thought you were far too cool for that.”

It’s said affably and it’s so close to what Zayn had thought at the time that he almost has to laugh, at both himself and the situation. He manages to tone it down to a brief quirk of his mouth. “Yeah,” he says, “I entered.”

The _you beat me_ is left unspoken, but Niall clearly hears it by the way he shuffles his feet. He doesn’t apologise though, which Zayn appreciates.

“Well,” Niall says eventually, “I’m still glad I didn’t enter this one. No way I could have beaten you tonight,” he pauses. “You wrote that song yourself?”

This is so far from something that Zayn wants to talk about that he briefly considers calling praise to the heavens when he sees the headlights of the bus drawing up around the corner.

“This is me,” he says, in lieu of an answer, already backing away towards the bus.

“Oh,” Niall says, and if it isn’t Zayn’s imagination, he might look kind of…disappointed. “Night then. I’ll, uh, I’ll see you at school?”

Zayn, still feeling completely out of step and a little bit exposed, shrugs slightly. “Yeah, maybe.”

Niall grins back like he’s made some kind of promise.

It’s only when the bus has finally pulled away, and Zayn is staring out at the yellow and red lights reflecting in the darkness, that he pauses to wonder why Niall came up to talk to him in the first place. It was almost as if they were friends. And, well.

They’re not.

*-*-*-*-*

The next day is a Saturday and Zayn does nothing but mooch around the house all day. He is not, no matter his sisters’ accusations, moping. His mum keeps shooting him worried looks and by the evening he feels like everything is itching and edging over his skin and retreats to his room to block it all out.

He can’t stop thinking about Niall and he doesn’t know why. He kind of hates it.

He’s lying on his bed, curtains drawn and headphones in, absentmindedly doodling in a sketchbook, when he feels his phone vibrate.

There’s a text, from an unknown number.

 _watching xfactor,_ it says, _these jokers aren’t a patch on you. you shuld enter!!!_

Zayn stares blankly for a moment, before typing back.

_Who is this?_

_oh sory_ , comes the response, before Zayn has even had the chance to put his phone down, _niall from school._

Zayn’s so shocked he almost drops his phone. _How did you get my no?_ he types, and then, because that sounds kind of rude on it’s own, _I don’t watch X-factor_.

_u don’t watch xfactor??? wat’s wrong with u??_

_Better things to do?_

This is a complete lie. As was claiming not to watch X-Factor, which Zayn actually loves. Normally he’d be glued to the screen but his oldest sister has friends over and it’s really not worth the giggling.

_like wat_

Before Zayn even has a chance to reply, his phone is buzzing again.

_srsly tho, u culd win this shit!!_

There are so many things Zayn wants to ask. Like why the hell Niall is suddenly texting him and acting like they’re friends. Instead, he finds himself typing, _If I could, then so could you._

 _lol, shut up,_ Niall replies, and then, _thanks,_ and then, _even your compliments sound grumpy :P_

Zayn doesn’t know what to do with any of this. He doesn’t know what to do with a cheeky emoticon. He doesn’t know what to do with his _life_.

He throws his phone on the bed and goes downstairs to watch X-Factor.

*-*-*-*-*

He was right. It’s not worth the giggling. But also - Niall could win this.

*-*-*-*-*

If Zayn thought that was going to be the end of it, he was very wrong. Niall texts him on Sunday and then the next day and the next day too. Despite two further repetitions of the question, he still doesn’t find out how Niall got his number.

Zayn does not know how to deal with this. He has no idea what to say to Niall, no idea how to respond to the other boy’s cheerful disposition and the easy friendship he seems to be offering. He feels like everytime he tries to type a reply, his brain twists into awkward, heavy knots and he can’t for the life of him work out a normal response.

Instead, he’s terse and sarcastic and he can’t work out whether he’s hoping Niall will take offense and go away, or…not.

At school, Niall waves at him in the corridors, grins, like they’re best mates. It makes Zayn’s stomach twist and he looks away and pretends he hasn’t noticed. Other people have though and Niall’s football friends give Zayn weird looks in the cafeteria, so after a couple of days he starts avoiding Niall completely, ducking away in the corridors whenever he sees him coming.

After a week or so, Niall stops waving.

He keeps texting though; thoughts and observations and dumb little jokes and a lot about food. Zayn feels weird every time his phone buzzes with a message and his Mum keeps shooting him increasingly worried looks, but on the rare days he doesn’t hear from Niall he feels even weirder and even singing doesn’t really seem to help.

This – just this - goes on for months and months until eventually, one day in June, just after Zayn has finished his final A-level exams, he gets a message that says, _wanna see a film tonite? + food?_

Zayn sits on his bed and stares at the screen until his eyes are dry and scratchy.

 _I don’t know any of your friends_ , he eventually replies.

_i kno, mate. just us?_

That’s…Zayn doesn’t even know what that is. A meeting? A…date? He hesitates to even think the word. He’s not gay. There’s nothing wrong with it, absolutely nothing, but he comes from a traditional family and he’s…just not. And neither is Niall, obviously, and even if he was, which is fine, he blatantly would not be interested in Zayn.

 _I’m busy_ , he texts back. It’s very clearly not true.

It doesn’t matter anyway, because school is over now and Zayn is going to university in London next year and he’s never going to see Niall again. Seven months of messages don’t mean anything in the long run. They’re not even friends.

Zayn checks his phone every ten minutes for the rest of the evening. Niall doesn’t text back.

*-*-*-*

Graduation is everything Zayn hates about high school, neatly packaged into one day. He goes anyway, though. His mum makes him and, naturally, she cries.

Zayn watches Niall as he goes up to get his exam certificates, and when he goes up to get his award for contribution to sport, and when he goes up to give his report on the football team’s year. He himself goes up to get an award for contribution to performing arts, but when he looks out Niall in the audience, Niall is looking at his lap.

He hasn’t texted since Zayn turned down his invitation to go out. It doesn’t bother Zayn and he doesn’t understand why his mother keeps asking why he’s moping.

It’s not as if he’s going to see Niall again after today anyway. There’s not a lot of point to any of this. It’s all fine.

After the ceremony, at home in his room, he flicks through the programme.

**Zayn Malik; Performing Arts and Illustration, _University College of London_.**

Absentmindedly Zayn turns a few pages back. They’re in alphabetical order.

**Niall Horan; Sports Science, _University College of London_.**

*-*-*-*


	2. Chapter 2

*-*-*-*

University is everything that Zayn had hoped for. He has his own room, his own space and if he wants to spend all his time immersed in art of one form or another, it’s actively encouraged. Here, he feels settled in his own skin in a way he never has before. It’s so easy to be invisble in London.

He’s made some friends as well and it’s friendship in a way he never had it in high school. Louis and Harry live on his floor. Louis is sharp edges and Harry is abstract smiles and they’re both just a bit odd and completely unapologetic about it. Liam, in contrast, is terrifyingly normal. He’s from Wolverhampton and his Dad runs a factory. Liam seems perpetually unsure of everything except that he wants to be at university in London and not in a factory in Wolverhampton. Zayn doesn’t really have any opinions on this one way or another, which Liam seems immediately enamoured of.

Liam is his favourite because Liam is happy to build a friendship from comfortable silences rather than words. Louis does not believe in silences after eleven o’clock in the morning and he tells Zayn this on the first day they move in. Thankfully, Louis and Harry are joined at the hip, best mates for the ages, from way back when, the same small town, home town and most of Louis’ chatter is absorbed by Harry’s hair.

It’s great, they’re great and Zayn’s mum has never been happier with his integration into the world.

He doesn’t see Niall. London is a big place, it turns out, a thousand times bigger than Bradford and there are a dozen blond, sporty, Irish boys on this campus alone.

So. That’s over and done with and in October, Zayn meets Perrie.

Perrie is incredible. She says what she thinks and thinks what she likes and all Zayn wants to do is write music for her to dance to. Louis takes the piss endlessly and mercilessly and even Liam asks when Zayn is going to ask her out.

And Zayn…doesn’t know. He tells Liam this but Liam just looks confused.

“I don’t get it,” he says, “you obviously like her?”

And Zayn does, is the thing. He thinks she’s amazing. But when he imagines her dancing, she’s so beautiful, but she’s always alone. She’s never dancing with him.

He asks his mum about it in the end, during one of their mandatory weekly phonecalls. This is potentially the stupidest thing he has ever done but she is the only one he can think to ask. He expects her to just tell him that he’s probably in love and to get on with telling Perrie about it and then that’ll be the kick he needs to get him into gear. He’s not stupid, he knows his mum has always wanted him to have a girlfriend. His whole family has, probably.

Instead, when he tells her, his mum just hums quietly into the phone. “If you like her, love, you go for it,” she tells him. “But…”

“But _what_?” Zayn demands, appalled.

“But be careful,” his mum says, and for approximately the three-thousandth time in his life, she sounds fretful. “Make sure you really do like her.”

“ _Obviously_ I _like_ her,” Zayn snaps.

“Mmmm,” she hums again, “I just think that perhaps if you really liked her, you wouldn’t need me to tell you to go for it.”

There’s a long and heavily pregnant pause. Louis and Harry are watching some stupid comedy show next door. Zayn can hear Louis’ cackle.

“What do you mean?” Zayn says, eventually.

“I just…” and for the first time, his mum sounds unsure. “When you talk about this girl, you don’t sound the same as when you’ve talked about other…people in the past.”

There had been a time, back when Niall was texting him, when Zayn had found himself physically incapable of not mentioning him at least once a night.

“I don’t understand,” he says.

“Just,” says his mum, “I just hope that you know, Zayn, that there’s nothing you could tell me – me and the girls – that would make us stop wanting you as a part of this family. Nothing.”

“I…” he feels sick. “I don’t know what you mean. I’m not…”

“I’m not saying you are,” his mum says, and she sounds a bit like she might be holding back tears. “Just that if you were, it would be okay.”

There’s a rock lodged in Zayn’s throat and everything from there upwards is tight and aching. “I’m not,” he says, and then he hangs up.

They don’t speak of it again.

*-*-*-*

Zayn asks Perrie out the next time he sees her. They’re sitting in the Union café, eating tomato soup and limp cheese toasties. There’s a guy next to them asleep, drooling on the pages of Physics for Dummies. It is perhaps not the best setting but Zayn finds after weeks of stagnation, he suddenly can’t wait.

Perrie blinks at him, spoon of soup halfway to her mouth. “What?” she asks.

“Do you want to go and get a drink sometime,” Zayn repeats and it comes out so flat and rehearsed it isn’t even a question.

“We get drinks all the time,” Perrie points out, eyebrow raising.

“No,” Zayn says, “like a date.” He feels strangely calm.

To give Perrie her due, she’s very gracious about it. “No,” she says, “I don’t think that would be a good idea.”

Zayn expected to feel crushed but instead he doesn’t feel much of anything except curiosity. “Oh,” he says. “Why not?”

Perrie shrugs. “I’m not sure. I just don’t think it would work,” she pauses and flicks a drop of soup at Zayn’s nose. “I like us how we are.”

“So do I,” Zayn says and deliberately ignores how strange that sounds, given he was the one that had just proposed a change.

“Great,” says Perrie. “Do you think I could balance the rest of this toastie on that guy’s head without him waking up?”

*-*-*-*

Zayn tells his friends that Perrie turned him down. They seem a bit surprised by his candor on the matter but he finds that his pride does not feel particularly wounded and he doesn’t much care if they know. Perrie is clearly far too good for most of the male population, so there’s no shame in being turned down by her.

Liam brings him morning tea in bed for the first week, but after that the subject is mostly dropped. It remains so until a wet Tuesday afternoon, when Zayn and Perrie are having hot chocolate in the Costa down the road from the student accommodation and arguing over whether it’s too dreary for a walk on Hampstead Heath.

Perrie is part way through bemoaning the tedium of the trek to North London and Zayn is busy lining up his own rebuttal, when he looks up and Niall is just. There. In the queue in Costa, in a soaking wet hoodie, asking the barista for a medium mocha to go.

Zayn stares and stares and stares, all the way through Niall getting his drink and getting his change and making his way to the door. They’re seated right in the back, so Niall doesn’t spot him and Zayn gets to watch all the way up to him pulling a disgusted grimace at the weather and then ducking out the door.

His coffee will be cold in seconds, Zayn thinks, and then abruptly remembers that Perrie had been talking and had, at an undetermined point in the last three or four minutes, stopped.

“Okay,” she says, “you want to tell me who that was?”

Zayn feels himself go red, blood rushing in to burn the tips of his ears. “No-one really,” he says. “Just a guy I…used to know from school.”

“Bullshit.” Perrie shoots him down immediately and Zayn has to remind himself that this is actually a facet of her personality he deeply respects. “You don’t stare like that at an old school friend.”

“He’s not…we weren’t friends.”

Perrie sits up a little straighter, like a bloodhound catching a scent. “Okay,” she says, “tell me everything. You know you want to.”

Zayn really, desperately doesn’t. Except for how…maybe he does. He’s never told anyone about Niall and their non-competiton and their non-friendship and their weird texting. He’s certainly never told anyone how much it messes him up and how he doesn’t really understand why.

They don’t go to Hampstead Heath that afternoon. Instead, they get another drink and a cake and Zayn tells Perrie about Niall. It takes him a long time, but it’s surprisingly easy.

When he’s done, Perrie regards him in silence for a few seconds. Then she smiles. “You asked me why we couldn’t date,” she says. “And that? That’s why.”

“I’m not…” _gay_ , “I don’t…” _fancy him_.

Perrie raises an eyebrow. “Are you sure about that?”

*-*-*-*

Zayn is completely sure about that until he’s getting a cup of tea in the kitchen two days later. His phone buzzes with a message and Zayn is waiting for Liam to text back about whether they’re going for dinner that night, so he just flicks the message open without really reading the envelope.

He narrowly avoids dropping his cup of tea on the floor.

_so, u were staring at me in costa on tues_

_I was not_.

For some reason, unlike in high school, the reply comes easily to hand and Zayn is typing back before he can think anything of it. His heart is beating fast.

_don’t front, mate, u were blatantly staring_

Maybe I missed you, Zayn thinks, in a flash out of nowhere, and forces himself to unclench his fingers and put his phone down before he actually sends that.

By the time he’s found the courage to pick the phone up again, there’s another message waiting.

_u at uni here ?_

Niall apparently didn’t read the ‘M’ section of the graduation programme.

_UCL. You?_

_no way!!! me 2!! sport science?_

_No, Performing Arts and Illustration._

_i ment i’m doing sport_

A pause and then, _dickhead._

It’s the fastest, easiest conversation they’ve ever had.

*-*-*-*

Zayn wasn’t sure what to expect after that first initial exchange, but what happens is an almost exact repeat of before. Niall texts and texts, everyday without fail and Zayn can’t seem to stop replying.

For some reason, what felt so impossibly twisted and awkward and uncomfortable at school now seems a bit…easier. Lighter. Niall is still the opposite of Zayn in every way but somehow, on his own in London, it no longer seems quite so impossible that they could be…friends. Maybe.

Things go on this way for about a week. Then it’s Monday again and Zayn is in the Union café caffeinating pre-lecture and trying to read a very tedious essay on the rise of Cubism, when someone draws out the chair opposite him and, uninvited, plonks themselves down.

“Hello,” Niall says.

Zayn doesn’t say anything. He feels a bit frozen. He just stares instead and supposes that if he does this for long enough, Niall will eventually be creeped out enough to leave.

Five minutes pass though and Niall is still there and Zayn is acutely aware that they are basically staring at each other. Niall doesn’t look that different from when they were at school. He’s in a hoodie and a backwards cap and his eyes are very blue. The only changes are in his face, which is slightly more angular, the childish roundness lost. Girls probably appreciate that.

“So,” Niall says eventually, not seeming to feel particularly awkward. “You’re weird. And kind of a dick.”

Zayn feels that maybe he should protest this, but both statements are true. He shrugs instead.

Niall ploughs on regardless. “See, all through school, I think – hey, he looks like an interesting guy and then it turns out we have music in common so I text you and yeah, you’re moody as fuck, but you always text back. So I try to talk to you at school and you act like I’m trying to give you bubonic plague. So, I figure – hey, maybe he’s shy, maybe I’m making him uncomfortable. So I stop and I do a bit more texting and you do a bit more replying and then I think – hey, maybe we could hang outside of school, where there’s less social crap. And you blow me off and you don’t even bother to hide that you’re making a bullshit excuse. So then I think – hey, he’s a dick and I’m done with this.”

It’s a little bit overwhelming, being hit with all these ‘hey’s that Niall has apparently been thinking. “Right,” Zayn says, and then runs out of inspiration for anything else.

Niall gives him a minute but when nothing else is forthcoming except waves of awkwardness, he rolls his eyes so vigorously it looks painful and keeps going. “But now we’re both at the same uni and I see you in Costa and you don’t stop staring at me for a full five minutes, like that is subtle in _any way_ and, it turns out, you still reply when I text you and I still think you’re an interesting guy. So, basically, are you less of a dick at uni and if so, shall we go for a pint sometime?”

Zayn’s heart is beating so hard he feels slightly sick. He doesn’t…”I don’t,” he says, only actually, he realises, he really does. “As friends?” he asks and immediately wants to throw up.

Niall raises one eyebrow very slowly. “Um,” he says, and Zayn is painfully aware that that is not a normal first question to ask in response to an invitation for a pint. He feels shaky and panicky and he’s sure it must be showing.

But then Niall just shrugs and gives him a smile, small but dawning with something that is, perhaps, understanding. “Whatever you want, mate,” he says, easily. “Eight at the Oxford Arms?”

*-*-*-*

They’re not friends, until suddenly, they are.

*-*-*-*

In November, it’s Louis’ birthday. Or rather, it’s not, but he forces them to celebrate anyway. Apparently there’s nothing worse than having a birthday in December, let alone on Christmas Eve, because everyone is more focused on Jesus then you.

Zayn doesn’t actually think that’s true in the twenty-first century, but whatever.

“To be fair,” Liam says, “Jesus is the son of God?”

“Yes, _Liam_ ,” says Louis. “Do you have a point?” He pauses and looks at Zayn, shrewd and calculating. “And don’t worry about your boy, mate. I saw him yesterday and invited him.”

“He’s not my boy,” Zayn snaps.

Louis raises an eyebrow, too clever-sharp. “Whatever. He’s coming. It’s my birthday and I want to meet him.”

“It’s not your fucking birthday,” Zayn tells him. He feels claustrophobic.

“Tough shit,” Louis says.

They go to a club in Angel, which has cheap entry and too-bright lights and music so loud it takes control of your heartbeat, because that is the kind of thing that Louis likes.

It is Zayn’s idea of hell. He gives himself two goals for the evening; guard the booth and get utterly smashed. He’s going to need it because he really doesn’t want to look at Niall being friends with his friends.

Mostly he’s scared to look at Niall his friend and Louis-Harry-Liam his friends and find them different. Find _himself_ different when he looks at them.

At just gone one, Niall comes over. He flops down right next to Zayn, even though there are two other entire sides of the booth he could have sat in. He smells like booze and sweat and his skin is hot and sticky where their shoulders press together. Zayn should find this repellant.

“What the fuck is going on tonight?” Niall bellows in his ear.

Zayn explains, via a series of doodles on a vodka-damp set of napkins, about Louis’ ideas on birthdays. When he’s done, Niall still looks confused but Zayn thinks this is more likely to do with Louis being an inexplicable sort of person than with the calibre of the explanatory drawings.

Niall gets up and leaves. Zayn sits back and picks at a piece of gum stuck underneath the table. Across the club, Louis and Harry are jiving in the middle of the dancefloor with little regard for the song playing. People are giving them a wide berth.

Niall comes back and he comes back bearing a large tray of shots of something violently green. He is literally everything Zayn despises in a person. He takes the glass Niall shoves at him anyway.

“Happy birthday to us!” Niall leans over and yells in his ear. He misjudges the distance slightly and his mouth brushes Zayn’s skin.

Zayn wishes he’d bite.

*-*-*-*

Much later, when it’s segued into that bit of the night where it’s too late to be night and too early to be morning, Louis allows them to head home. They’ve lost Niall to the N29 night bus and Liam has pulled, possibly accidentally.

The bus they get home is the number 1. This is easy to remember which is fortunate because none of them can remember much else. They sit on the top deck and Harry settles at the front with a genderless couple who are decorated with dreadlocks. They smell funky, but Harry doesn’t seem to notice and they’re chatting about how small cars are better for the environment and Polish girls are the best looking.

Zayn and Louis sit at the back, on the long bench-like seat, feet up and facing each other. The bus swoops and swerves, dancing through London as though the city is a Magic Eight ball that someone is shaking. Zayn is almost definitely going to be sick before they make it home. Louis already has been.

“So, Niall,” Louis says, kicking Zayn to get his attention.

“What about him?” Zayn doesn’t bother to open his eyes.

“You fancy him or what?”

The denial is normally there as easy as breathing but tonight it seems to have gotten stuck, deep down and drowning in viciously green alcohol and Niall’s lips on his skin. Zayn pries one eye open. Louis’ are still shut and his head lolls back against the window of the bus, bumping with every crack in the road. He looks for all the world like he could not give a shit.

“Yeah,” Zayn says. Partly it feels momentous, partly it just feels very small.

“You gonna ask him out then, or what? He’s crackers on you.”

“I’m not gay,” Zayn says. Louis doesn’t even twitch. “I’m not.”

“Never said you were.”

There is nothing to be said to this. Zayn swings his feet down and round and faces forward. He really is going to be sick. He leans forward and opens his mouth, but words come out instead. “They used to say I was,” he hears himself say. “Some kids at school.”

“What did they say?”

Outside the bus is passing a McDonalds. There’s a couple sitting on the cold pavement by the door, sharing a McFlurry, spoon for spoon.

“Queer,” it feels like someone else is saying it. “Freak, faggot, cocksucker.”

“Why?”

“Did art. Sing. Look it.” Fuck, he could use a cigarette. “Dad left my Mum for another man.”

“Jesus.” Louis’ drags in a breath and Zayn knows he’s going to ask. “They used to say it about me, too.”

It is the first time Zayn has loved Louis for something unsaid, rather than something spoken. “Who said what?”

“Kids at school. Thought I was gay. Drama and how I look and Haz, I guess. Tried to kick my head in round the back of the drama hut once.”

“Successfully?”

“Nah, janitor came round to do the bins.”

“Doesn’t it…” _bother you_.

Louis thumps one trainer against the seat cushion. Zayn feels the vibration of it in his thigh. “Course it bothers me, dickhead. But I ain’t gonna let it change what I do. Not like anything I do is gonna change them. End of the day, they’ve got their nasty words and scummy friends and I’ve got Hazza and my sisters and my Mum and you lot. So what’s the fucking point?”

“Suppose.” Most of Zayn just feels numb, except the point in his sternum which feels like a raw nerve. “Wasn’t that bad, anyway,” he says. “Was a while ago. Changed schools and it was okay.”

He’d taken great care not to let anyone know about his Dad at that school.

“What about your Mum?” Louis asks. He sounds bored and it’s the only reason Zayn can answer.

“She’d hate it,” Zayn says. Nausea rolls over him like a battering ram and he empties his stomach by his feet. It’s worryingly green and smells hot and sour. His stomach roils.

Louis stays quiet for a bit and then, just before their stop, he kicks Zayn again.

“Your Dad sounds like a dick, mate,” he says. “But he was a dick because he’s a dick. He wasn’t a dick because he’s gay.”

He lopes off down the aisle to untangle Harry from the dreadlocks and Harry immediately leaps on his back. They vanish down the stairs with a crash and a yell and there’s a muted bellow from the bus driver below.

Zayn closes his eyes and presses his forehead against the cool glass. He stays on the bus until the end of the route.

*-*-*-*


	3. Chapter 3

After that night, he doesn’t hear from Niall for a few days. It’s weird. Zayn doesn’t like it. He knows he should just send a message of his own but the conversation on the bus with Louis is crawling under his skin. He feels twitchy and paranoid. Drawing in his room is the only thing that will sate it. He draws Liam and Harry and Louis, happy-anxious smile and mad curls and sharp blue eyes. He draws Niall.

Then, four days later, he gets a message.

_bin a while, sorry m8. dun my knee in playing football, had to go home 4 a bit._

_Done it in how badly?_

_op this afternoon. they say they dunno after that._

_You’re having surgery?_

_What are they doing?_

_How long will it take?_

_Which hospital?_

_it's just a knee, mate, not dyin. dunno how long it’ll take, depends on damage i gues. royal wessex bk home. haha, why, u comin to visit ??_

_Don’t flatter yourself. Get well soon, you can’t afford to get lazy._

_yeah miss u 2, u wanker_

Zayn puts his phone down carefully on the bed. He thinks about waking up in hospital after his appendix was removed and his Mum not being there because she had to put the girls to bed and his Dad had gone out for a paper a month ago and had yet to come back.

He remembers Niall telling him about his Mum that bakes cakes that are better than sex and his Dad who takes him golfing every weekend. He’s being fucking ridiculous. He goes out to the kitchen and makes a cup of tea.

Then he goes into his room, packs a bag and picks up his wallet and phone. He goes to the train station.

*-*-*-*

The Royal Wessex is big and grey and grim on the outside, and white and shiny and grim on the inside. It’s gone nine in the evening when Zayn goes through the doors to reception and everything smells like medicine and despair.

The night nurse on reception tells him that Niall is in ward 3B, but that visiting hours are over. Zayn smiles politely and thanks her and asks for details of when he can visit tomorrow. Then he asks if he could just use the toilet before he goes home and ducks into the stairwell instead.

Ward 3B is at the end of a long, quiet corridor. It’s lit by fluorescent lights that seem to be glowing with brightness sapped from everything around them. They buzz faintly.

Niall’s in a bed at the end of the ward. He’s asleep, neck at a weird angle and his hair is spikey with grease. His left leg is suspended in a cast with a bulky bit right at the level of his knee. Zayn sits down in the chair by his bed and hopes that the only other conscious occupent of the ward – an old lady with a cast on her wrist, two beds down – isn’t going to start screaming.

This is about as far as he got in his plan. He hadn’t considered what he’d do if Niall was asleep, but now it’s happened, it seems like the only option is to watch him and feel a bit like a serial killer while doing so. He’s not enough of a dick to wake someone who’s only just recovered from surgery.

He loses the choice when he shifts in his chair and one of the metal legs screeches against the floor. Zayn closes his eyes and prays no one was disturbed. When he opens them again, Niall is looking back at him.

“Am I hallucinating?” Niall’s voice is slurred, from sleep and probably morphine.

“No,” Zayn says. “I wanted to see how you were.”

 _And you couldn’t just text like a normal person?_ Niall’s eyebrows ask.

He’s grinning though. “Admit it,” he says. “You were worried.”

“I was _bored_ ,” Zayn insists. “Not like there was anything better to do.”

Niall’s grin is eating his entire face. “I knew it,” he says, and he’s almost giggling. “You’re nothing but a giant softie, I _knew it_.”

It’s probably the drugs. “Shut up,” Zayn says, “you massive druggie. Are you _high_?”

Niall laughs. “Probably. Think they gave me the good stuff.” He pauses, and then, he reaches out.

Zayn sits frozen and watches from somewhere else as Niall shifts his hand on the bed, just enough so that his little finger is touching Zayn’s.

“I…”

“Shut up,” Niall tells him, so Zayn does. They sit in silence, two millimetres of skin touching, until security arrives to throw Zayn out. The night nurse isn’t stupid, it seems.

“Hey, Zayn?” Niall says, when they’re standing at the foot of the bed, the security guard’s meaty palm heavy on Zayn’s shoulder. “Thanks, mate.”

Zayn doesn’t know what to say, so he doesn’t say anything. The old lady with the broken wrist winks at him as he’s escorted from the room.

*-*-*-*

Zayn goes to the hospital everyday for the next three days. Niall texts him when his parents go home so Zayn can avoid them and they both avoid talking about why that is. Mostly they chat, and listen to music, and play FIFA on PSP. Zayn fucking hates FIFA.

Niall moans endlessly about the food. A large part of his emotional equilibrium is linked to his stomach. Zayn goes into town and gets a Nandos and puts it in a tupperware. The waiter looks at him as though he’s something nasty on the floor and the whole thing is only lukewarm by the time he gets across town but he gives it to Niall anyway.

Niall opens the pot and stares for a moment. Zayn feels his face burn. “It was a shit idea,” he says. “It’s probably cold, anyway.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Niall says. His eyes are really fucking blue.

On Thursday evening, Zayn has to go back to London. The emails from his tutor over missed lectures and seminars have taken on a narky tone and he has a presentation on Friday. The whole thing pisses him off because Niall is starting physio on Friday morning. Zayn knows from when his sister broke her leg that physio can make you feel more shit than the surgery did.

“It’s fine,” Niall says, when he tells him. “Obviously, it’s fine.”

His smile isn’t quite as bright though. Zayn stands awkwardly by the side of the bed and wishes he was somebody different. Niall is watching him quietly and it feels expectant. He wishes he hadn’t come to say goodbye. He’s shit at it.

Zayn wants to kiss him. He’s not gay, but he wants to kiss him. He feels tired all of a sudden.

He does a weird, smile-nod thing instead. “See you at uni,” he says.

Niall nods. “See you, mate.” He’s still smiling, but it’s not quite as good as before.

Zayn’s not gay, but he’s not a dick either. Or, not most of the time anyway. He lurks in the corridor for another forty-five minutes, until Niall disappears in the other direction to go to the loo. Then he sneaks back and drops his sketchbook on Niall’s pillow.

The last pages are mostly just drawings of him.

*-*-*-*

A week passes, and then two, and Niall still hasn’t mentioned coming back. They text all the time. Liam and Harry are distracted, but Louis makes sure to rip the shit out of him for it, in a way that Zayn knows means he has his back.

 _y r Li &H distracted? _Niall asks one night.

Zayn wants to tell him, but it’s a long story and the idea of typing it all out is wearying.

 _Long story_ , he replies.

Less than five seconds later, his phone rings. Niall’s number flashes up on screen. After all these months, there is still a +44 in front of it. He’s never got around to entering it into his contacts.

Immediately, he presses the button to hang up. Two seconds later, it starts to ring again. This time Zayn ignores it. It rings again. And again. And again.

There’s a thump as Louis throws god knows what at the wall adjoining their rooms. “Malik, answer your fucking phone!!”

Zayn does.

“What is _wrong_ with you?” Niall demands. He sounds crackly, like an Irish crow.

“I don’t talk on the phone,” Zayn tells him. He doesn’t. He’s terrible at it.

“I don’t give a fuck.” Niall sounds irritated. “I want to hear the stories about Liam and Harry and you’re so fucking lazy about texting.”

“I don’t talk on the phone,” Zayn says, again.

Niall heaves a sigh. “What if I told you my leg hurts?”

“Does it?”

“Maybe.”

There’s a pause. “You are such a dick,” Zayn says eventually.

The story basically boils down to Liam getting a girlfriend, which – again – was possibly an accident, and Harry getting a job at the university radio station, which _definitely_ was. It’s quite funny if you tell it how Louis tells it, but Zayn is both shit at telling stories and, as aforementioned, awkward on the phone.

Niall cackles in his ear for a good two minutes anyway.

*-*-*-*

It’s the first Wednesday in December when Zayn gets the phonecall. Niall has been gone for over three weeks. Zayn feels as listless as the weather. He refuses to believe the two are related.

It’s late, gone eleven, and Zayn is in his room fucking around with some song lyrics. Normally he’d hate to be interrupted but nothing is feeling quite right this evening so when his phone rings, he throws his pen down with a huff and answers it.

It’s Niall. It’s pretty much always Niall.

“All right, mate,” Niall says. He sounds…flat, his voice thick.

“What’s wrong?” Zayn says, immediately. “Are you…” _crying?_

“S’fine,” Niall says. “Just had some bad news. Wanted you to hear it from me, before you heard it from anyone else.”

Where the hell else does Niall think Zayn would be getting updates on his life?

“Okay,” he says.

“So,” Niall starts, and then pauses to take a breath. Zayn feels a bit odd and hollow. “I spoke to the doctors today. About my knee.”

“Are they clearing you?” Zayn asks. They aren’t. This, he somehow already knows.

“Not exactly,” Niall says. “I can walk again now and I’m not as dependent on the crutches. I’m going to get back pretty much full range of movement with time, as long as I don’t put any strain on the leg.”

This is just a flurry of words, all trying to conceal the one glaringly obvious kernel of unpleasant truth. “Strain on the leg?”

Niall exhales. His breathing is foggy but he just comes out with it. “I can’t play again,” he says. “Not football, not anything. Not unless I want to destroy the joint by the time I’m 25.”

Zayn wants to argue, tell him he must be wrong, that there must be something the doctors can do. But Niall has people to do that for him – people that love him – and he doesn’t need that from Zayn.

“When are you coming back?” he asks, instead. He can’t do the sympathy thing. He doesn’t have a fucking clue what to say.

“That’s the other thing,” Niall’s voice is entirely toneless. “There are two physical units in my degree. I can’t do them. Hobbling is not a recognised sport.”

Zayn doesn’t want any of that to register. “When are you coming back?” he says, again.

“I’m not, Zayn,” Niall says. He sounds so so tired. “I’m not coming back. I’m gonna stay here until Christmas, figure out what I want to do in the New Year.”

Zayn has nothing – nothing – to say.

“So, um, yeah,” Niall says, eventually. “Sorry about that. Bit of a downer.”

“I don’t know what to say,” Zayn tells him and he says it so quietly he’s almost mouthing the words. Niall seems to hear him anyway.

“I didn’t need you to say anything,” Niall says. “I just needed you not to be a dick about it.” He says this in a tone that could be accusatory, or could not.

Zayn needs to say something. Anything. He’s not a dick.

“I could come and see you over the holidays?” he hears himself say. “Could help you find another course or do a CV or whatever.”

There’s a long silence.

“You’d be really, really crap at that,” Niall says eventually, but the grin is bursting through in his voice. Warmth seeps from the tips of Zayn’s burning ears all the way down into his sternum.

“Fuck off,” he says. “Fuck you, man.”

Niall chuckles and then there’s another pause. This one feels warm enough to linger in for a while.

“Let’s talk about something else,” Niall says, eventually. “What are you doing?”

“Working on a song,” Zayn tells him, and then, grumpily, “it’s not going well.”

“Want a hand?” Niall asks. “Two heads better than one and all that.”

Zayn has to bite down an immediate crude joke. His stomach flips with what should be disgust, but somehow doesn’t feel that much like it anymore. “How’s that going to work?”

“Well,” Niall says. He hesistates, “you could sing it for me?”

“No,” Zayn says, immediately. “Absolutely, no fucking way.”

*-*-*-*

“Were you _serenading_ your boyfriend on the phone last night?”

“Fuck off,” Zayn snaps. “He is not my boyfriend.”

“No, seriously,” Louis actually could not look more delighted. “ _Serenading_?”

Zayn throws an entire packet of bagels at his head.

*-*-*-*

December rolls on by, the end of term and the weight of essay deadlines unswayed by the taste of snow in the air and the growing promise of Christmas. The last few days are spent in solitary confinement, poring over books and essays and compositions, only emerging to get food and caffeine and blink at each other sleepily like hedgehogs wobbling on the edge of hibernation.

By the time he finally puts his pen down on the last word of his last critique, Zayn feels stiff and stretched as though every muscle and ligament has been replaced by old tired rubber. He staggers out to the kitchen and finds Louis, leaning on the counter and speed-reading through a sheaf of paper, blue eyes flickering.

Zayn gets the orange juice from the fridge, pauses, and then swaps it for a beer. He hitches himself onto the sideboard and eventually Louis throws the papers down with a disgusted sigh.

“This is a pile of shit,” he says. “But I am done.”

It is a sentiment that resonates with Zayn wholeheartedly. “Want to go and hand stuff in?” he asks.

It’s only about ten minutes from the accommodation to the academic registry office, so they walk. It’s fucking freezing outside, and Zayn huddles deep into his hoodie and tries not to breath too deeply.

Handing in the stack of assignments feels like handing over a large weight. He might have done crap, but he’s done and that’s all that matters now. They walk back with a lighter step and Louis tips his head back and exhales noisily at the sky.

“I can’t believe first term is over,” he says. “Be bloody weird to go home tomorrow.”

Zayn shrugs non-commitantly. Going home has been a persistent draw under his skin for a while now. Louis looks at him out of the corner of his eye, sly.

“You gonna see Niall when you’re back?”

Zayn shrugs again. “Maybe,” he says. “Dunno, haven’t thought about it.” Lie.

“Say hello from the rest of us,” Louis says. “Tell him we miss him, the Irish weirdo. He should come up and visit next term.”

Sometimes Zayn cannot tell whether Louis is really thick or the cleverest of them all.

“Maybe,” he says, again. Then, “yeah, I’ll tell him.”

Louis makes a satisfied noise deep in his throat. As they arrive home, he reaches out and throws an arm around Zayn’s shoulders. He smells like bitter city winter and stale coffee.

“Tonight,” he says, “tonight, Zayn my boy, we get completely wankered.”

*-*-*-*

They do.

It’s eleven o’clock at the Union bar and Zayn is sat in a booth. Somewhere, his friends are dancing and the booth is dancing too. Perrie is lying across the back bench, her head in Zayn’s lap. Her hair is spilling all over his jeans and her hands are waving under his nose, conducting the lights as they waltz across the ceiling.

He’s really fucking drunk. Everyone is.

Or, almost everyone at least. It suddenly feels fundamentally wrong that Niall is not here, drunk, with them.

_Areyou drunk ?_

Zayn balances his phone on Perrie’s bare stomach where her cropped top has ridden up. A minute later it buzzes with a response and she squeals and nearly falls off the bench.

_nah, think u might be tho_

_No_

_realy? disapointing Malik, its end of temr_

“He’s terrible at spelling,” Perrie observes, reading the screen from his lap.

Liam arrives back at the table just in time to hear this statement. “If you can still judge people’s spelling, you need another shot, Pez,” he says, and then immediately goes scarlet. His girlfriend, Sophia, curled up behind him, rolls her eyes at Zayn over Liam’s shoulder. Liam is hopeless.

Perrie springs upright at the word ‘shot’ and doesn’t even need to stagger to right herself. She is wearing seven inch heels. “Right then, Payne,” she says, jabbing a finger into Liam’s chest, “you are _so_ on.” She links her arm through Liam on one side and Sophia on the other and hauls them off to the bar.

Zayn watches her go and loves her and wonders how the hell he ever thought she could be his girlfriend. His phone buzzes again.

_i hope ur ignoring me because your drinking more_

Perrie is right, Zayn thinks absently.

 _Your soelling is shit_ , he types.

_fuck u, zayner_

_least i kno theres no o in spelling_

Zayn snorts. God, he’s so lame. Niall is _so lame_.

_You are so lame_

_fuck u, ur in2 it_

Oh god.

He is, is the awful, scary, horrifying thing. He is, he really is. God. He is so fucking drunk.

 _Yeah,_ he replies. Those four letters feel bigger than the world. There’s a long, long pause. It’s an odd feeling, everything suddenly riding on a text notification.

_i am 2_

_in2 it, i mean_

Zayn feels like his skin is buzzing. He can’t deal with anything else now. Just this. This.

_I want to kiss you._

The pause this time is long, long, much longer. Then,

_fuck, me 2._

_me 2_

_sober up, u massive drunkard n come home_

Everything is spinning wildly now and the booth is doing loop-de-loops. Quite a feat of engineering, that. Zayn’s head suddenly weighs a hundred times what it had and he leans it back against the wall. He raises his hands to bring his phone into his eyeline because somehow that is less effort than having to look down.

 _I miss you_ , he types.

He just has time to press send before the need to close his eyes becomes suddenly and completely overwhelming.

*-*-*-*

The next morning is a blur of hangover and heading home and everything just tender and _aching_ ; head and eyes and stomach. It’s not until Zayn is on the train, slumped in a cold sweat that feels like it might be pure vodka leaving his body, that he finally scans through his phone. He doesn’t remember much of last night. He hasn’t been that drunk in ages, possibly ever.

He has the usual cacophony of missed calls and text messages from Louis and Harry and Liam, trying to navigate their way through the night with no-one left behind. He has a message from his mum telling him she’s looking forward to seeing him. He also has two new messages from Niall.

_lemme kno wat time ur train gets in 2day. cleared 2 drive, i'll come get u._

_cant wait 2 see u, m8_

Everything feels a bit frozen, memory nagging at the back of his mind, nothing clear, nothing concrete but a strong feeling of enroaching panic. What did he _do_ last night.

Zayn scrolls up and reads the previous messages. With every word, dread and adrenaline and hangover pulse harder and harder behind his eyes.

*-*-*-*

He could text his mum for a lift from the train station, but it’s not far and she’s doubtlessly busy, so he walks. His old neighbourhood looks different. Before, he used to feel hemmed in. Now he feels like he could just see over the top of the houses if he wanted to.

It’s odd.

When he gets his key in the lock and opens the door, his mum is there and she’s crying. It’s even more annoying than usual, because there’s suddenly a real possibility he might join in. For a few hours, he gets caught up in unpacking and playing with his sisters and going shopping with his mum and just fitting himself back into the skin of home. It’s easy not to think.

Later, when his sisters are in bed, he goes down the stairs and finds his mum in the kitchen.

“Tea, love?” she says. It’ll be chamomile, the shitty herbal stuff that somehow always tastes like dirt, but Zayn says yes anyway. They don’t have chamomile tea at uni.

Him and his mum sit at the table and sip tea and he tells her a bit about his course. She smiles proudly all the way through, even though he can tell she doesn’t really understand much of what he is saying.

“What about that boy?” she says eventually, into a silence. “The one you came home to visit in hospital?”

All of a sudden, tears prickle fiercely at the corner of Zayn’s eyes, burning and blurring his vision. He’s just so tired.

“He’s fine, Mum,” he says, and gets up from the table. “I’m going to bed.”

Upstairs, on his bedside table, his phone is blinking a steady flashing light. He should pick it up, plug it into charge, read his messages. Instead he shoves it under a pile of clean clothes on his desk.

It stays there until Christmas.

*-*-*-*

Christmas morning is just them; Zayn and his mum and his sisters, but somehow it still manages to be utter chaos. They open stocking presents in the morning. Zayn – too old for silly knick-knacks – get a gorgeous set of oil paints, each tube carefully and individually wrapped so that they neatly fill his stocking. His mum beams with pride when he thanks her.

They have breakfast, which is just toast, but they’re allowed to have Nutella on it and Zayn and his mum have a glass of Bucks fizz each. Then his mum sinks into kitchen preparations and Zayn is tasked with preventing disasters amongst the rest of the house. He is only moderately successful.

At just gone eleven, his dad rings. His mum answers the phone and then calls for the girls immediately. They take it in turns to talk, reporting all their news, passing the receiver back and forth between them. When they’re done, they pass the receiver to Zayn automatically.

Zayn takes it, waits for them to scamper back to the lounge. Then ever-so-softly, he replaces the receiver back on the handset.

“How is your father?” his mum asks, when he goes back out to the kitchen.

“Fine,” Zayn says.

The look she shoots him is uncharacteristically sharp, but instead of saying anything she just sets him peeling potatoes.

*-*-*-*

Lunch is chicken rather than turkey and strange herb stuffing rather than the sausagemeat. Nobody cares at all. They all have seconds, even Zayn’s youngest sister, and his mum forces them all to eat at least one sprout.

After, they go into the lounge to open main presents, piled under the Christmas tree. Zayn gets a new sketchbook and an expensive paintbrush from his mum.

“Sorry,” she says, looking guilty. “The paints were your main present really, but these bits didn’t fit so well in a stocking.”

“They’re great,” Zayn says, honestly. “It’s just what I wanted, Mum.”

She looks so pleased he has to look away.

From his dad he gets a watch. It’s got a stiff leather strap and a big silver face and it smells of money. Zayn puts it straight back in the box. He smudges each of his new oil paint colours onto a page of his sketchbook instead.

Eventually, they are all done and everyone is happy and absorbed. There’s a single lone envelope propped up against the tree.

“Oh!” says his mum, spotting it. “That one’s yours, love. It came in the post two days ago.”

The envelope is a cheap white one, with something stiff inside. The front bears Zayn’s name and address in the most appalling chicken-scratch handwriting.

“One of your friends?” his mum asks.

“Louis,” Zayn says, slightly confused.

He opens the envelope and a scrap of paper falls out. He turns it over and recognises it immediately. It’s a stylised line drawing of a London bus with the number 1 on the front of it. Zayn drew it for Louis the day after his ‘birthday’ celebration.

It wasn’t a thank you. A recognition, perhaps.

The other item in the envelope is a photograph. Zayn pulls it out. It’s a photograph of Louis’ ankle, perpetually bare even in the coldest of weather. But where there was once just pale skin, there is now a perfect replica of the number 1 bus, black ink lines stark and permanent.

The inscription on the back, scribbled in blotchy blue biro, reads,

_Happy Christmas, mate!!_

_Don't be a dick, yeah?_

Fucking Louis, Zayn thinks and scrubs a hand fiercely across his face. His mum is twitching on the sofa, palpably curious. Wordlessly, Zayn passes the photo and his drawing across to her.

“Did you draw him this?” she asks.

Zayn nods.

“Oh, what a _lovely_ idea!” she says. She appears to have momentarily forgotten how much she hates tattoos. “You should give him a call, love. Tell him thank you.”

“Yeah,” Zayn says. He should, at that.

Upstairs, he digs his phone - cold and silent - out from under the pile of clothes. The pile of clothes has doubled in size since he came home. When he plugs it in, it’s been out of charge for so long that it takes a good three or four minutes to finally light up again. Zayn switches the volume to vibrate and places at the end of his bed. Warily, he settles back against his pillow to wait.

It buzzes. It buzzes and buzzes and buzzes and buzzes, an angry hornet of ignored words and friends.

After it’s fallen silent and been that way for a good few minutes, Zayn picks it up. He has 46 messages. To no-one’s surprise, the top part of his inbox is filled exclusively with Liam and Louis and Harry, all his most recent messages.

He texts Liam and Harry and Perrie a quick Merry Christmas and then thumbs open the messages from Louis, of which there are many. Zayn doesn’t bother to read them all. He can guess the gist. He opens a new message and hovers over the keys for a bit, but finds that he can’t think of the words. His mind is full of something else. Someone else.

A click of the back button and a quick scroll down reveals that Niall has sent him twelve text messages. The contact stops six days ago. Zayn doesn’t want to read them. He doesn’t want to know what Niall has to say.

He reads them all.

They start at cheerful and then range through confused, worried and eventually, pissed off. The last one just reads,

_ok, i got it. message received._

Zayn puts the phone down on the bed, sits back against the wall and carefully picks his pillow up. Then, he buries his face in it and bites down, hard enough that every bone in his face starts to ache. It doesn’t feel like enough.

Nothing about this feels like enough and that’s the problem. Niall is – was? – his friend and it should have been enough and it wasn’t. He fucked it up. He’s fucked up.

He’s just so tired of this. So tired of being around Niall. Even more tired of not being around him. Tired of people telling him it’s okay to be who he is. Tired of knowing it’s not. Tired of wondering if he’s wrong about that.

He misses Niall.

Taking his head out of the pillow seems like an insurmountable task, so Zayn stays where he is. The cotton is hot and damp around his eyes. He can’t breathe with his face pressed down, but he stays still until the last possible moment, before having to take desperate gasps of air.

He sits and cries and breathes like he’s drowning.

*-*-*-*

Zayn’s mum gives him a hour before she comes upstairs. She’s carrying two cups of chamomile tea and a plate of cold pig-in-blankets. She doesn’t knock and Zayn doesn’t tell her he’s fine.

They eat in silence for a while, before his mum sighs and turns to face him. She doesn’t touch him but her hands twitch as though she wants to.

“I’m not going away, love,” she says. “I’m worried about you.”

“Do you hate dad for being gay?”

It just comes out. Zayn feels sick and hot but it’s out there now, dancing in the room, and he can’t take it back.

“No,” his mum says. If she is surprised by the question, she does not show it. “I don’t.”

“Why _not_?”

His mum sighs. “Zayn, your father gave me lots of reasons to hate him. He did a lot of things wrong. But being gay wasn’t one of them.”

“Yes,” Zayn tells her. “It was.” His dad left because he was gay.

His mum looks impossibly sad. “Love, your dad lied and he cheated and when the truth came out, he ran away. I blame him for all of those things. But I can’t blame him for who he loves. That’s not how it works.”

_“But he was a dick because he’s a dick. He wasn’t a dick because he’s gay.”_

“I don’t want to be a dick,” Zayn says.

“Then don’t be,” says his mum. “You are in control of the way you behave.”

“Okay.”

His mum does take his hands then. “I’m not thinking or hinting at or implying anything, Zayn. But I’m going to say this and I want you to listen. If it applies to you, it applies. If it doesn’t, then it’s still a good thing to remember,” she pauses. “Being gay and being a good person are not mutually exclusive. And, more importantly, neither are being gay and being happy. And all I want is for you to be happy. Okay?”

Zayn nods.

They sit in silence until the shadows lengthen on the walls and downstairs one of his sisters starts crying.

His mum levers herself to her feet. “I love you,” she says. “And so do your sisters. That will never change.”

“I fucked something up,” Zayn tells her.

His Mum pauses on her way out of the room.

“So fix it.”

*-*-*-*

The problem, Zayn finds, is that he’s a coward. Ever since high school he’s lived in the space in his head full of art and music and quiet and now he’s finding it almost impossible to leave.

He texts Niall, a simple _Merry Christmas,_ but he doesn’t get a response. He didn’t expect one, except for the part where it really hurts, so clearly, on some level, he did.

Zayn wouldn’t have text himself back either.

He’s coping, mostly not thinking about things too closely, until he goes to the supermarket on the 29th and there, examining the broccoli, is Niall. His hair is shoved under a grey beanie and he’s wearing jeans and a hoodie. He’s leaning heavily on the trolley, across which there is balanced a thin metal cane. He is one hundred percent nothing special at all.

There’s a lump in Zayn’s throat. There’s a possibility that it’s his heart. He doesn’t think his next move through. He is so so sick of thinking. He walks forward and stands in front of the carrots.

“Hi,” he hears himself say. His voice is scratchy and hesistant. He sounds like a dog waiting to be kicked. God.

He’s on tenterhooks, everything tense, tingling with the need to know what Niall is going to say, when Niall is going to turn and look at him.

Niall doesn’t do either. He picks up a head of broccoli, puts it in his trolley and then turns and limps away.

*-*-*-*

 _We need to talk_. _Please. I know I don’t deserve it._

It’s the most pathetic text he’s ever sent. A year ago, he’d be disgusted with himself. As it is, he doesn’t give a fuck. Now that he’s seen Niall, he cannot stop thinking about him. It seems a literal impossibility.

He thinks about how Niall had looked in the vegetable aisle. How he’d looked at school; gum-snapping, gun-finger-saluting _idiot_. He thinks about how he sounds on the phone late at night, accent ten times thicker and warm like whiskey. He thinks of all the times Niall has reached out to him and kept on reaching out.

He thinks about how much he wants to kiss him.

He doesn’t think about the conversation with his Mum. He doesn’t think about being gay.

It’s just Niall.

Niall doesn’t text back on the 29th. Or on New Year’s Eve, or on New Year’s Day. He doesn’t text back on the 2nd or the 3rd. He doesn’t text back on the 4th either, but when Zayn opens the front door to the postman, it’s not the postman.

“Hi,” says Niall. His face is expressionless. “Can I come in?”

“How did you know where I live?” This is simultaeneously the first and least important question. Zayn suspects he is not going to get an answer, as with his phone number all those months ago.

“Does it matter?” Niall asks. He does not sound amused.

It really does not matter. Zayn should let him in, but his sister has two friends over and the washing machine is running and his Mum is hoovering upstairs.

“Do you mind if we talk outside?” he asks, tentatively. “It’s, uh, pandemonium back there.”

Niall shrugs. Zayn steps out and closes the front door behind him and, after a beat of hesitation, sits down on the front step. He immediately regrets this when Niall remains standing, leaning against one of the pillars of the porch. He’s not looking at Zayn.

He doesn’t say anything and there’s only one thing that Zayn knows he definitely wants to say, so he starts with that.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I was a dick.”

Niall’s mouth tightens at the corners. “Yeah,” he says. He looks tired. Zayn feels a sharp stab of guilt. Niall’s been on his own for weeks, he realises, injured and floating, without a clue what he wants to do with his life. Zayn was supposed to have been helping him figure it out.

He is such a shit friend.

Niall tips his head back and looks at the sky. After a moment, he heaves out a huge breath and then finally, he turns to look at Zayn. His eyes are flat blue.

“Right,” he says. “I’m just gonna say it how it is okay, because I’m sick of feeling like this. It might not be what you want to hear, but tough shit, because I think you hearing it is the only way we’re going to get anything done.”

Zayn wants to touch him. He forces himself to stay still and nod instead.

“Okay,” says Niall. He looks a little surprised by Zayn’s easy capitulation. “Here’s the thing. I fancy you. As in, not just friends, not just whatever weird not-quite-friends thing we’ve been doing. I want to fuck you. I want to date you. I have for a long time.”

Zayn can’t do anything. Can’t move. Can’t breathe. He needs Niall to keep talking more than he needs the next beat of his heart.

“I have not,” Niall continues, “got a single fucking clue what you want. But I can’t keep doing this…this _thing_ where we both keep reaching out and I keep hoping and you keep hinting. This thing where you say things that I desperately want to hear but you only say them when you’re so drunk you can’t stand up and I haven’t got a fucking clue if you meant them. I’m not that kind of bloke, Zayn.”

“I meant them,” Zayn says. The words take on a will of their own.

“Shut up,” Niall says. He squeezes his eyes shut, “just. Shut up. I was done with this – with you – after school. And I was done with it after you stopped texting me back as well. And guess what? I’m sitting in your front fucking garden. What does that tell you?”

“Um.”

Niall laughs and there’s no joy in it at all. “Yeah, mate, I don’t know either.” He shifts his weight a bit and when Zayn dares meet his eyes, they’ve softened just slightly. “Look, Zayn, I spoke to Louis. He wouldn’t tell me shit, not really, but he hinted at some stuff and frankly, that’s the only reason I’m here and not warm and cosy in front of the TV at home.” He pauses. “I just need to know where I stand, mate, that’s all. You like me? That’s fine. More than. You don’t like me? That’s fine too. I just want to know.”

He’s looking at Zayn and his eyes are blue and searching and he smells like bubblegum and washing powder and Zayn just opens his mouth.

“I’m not gay,” he says. It’s automatic, it’s a reflex and he feels sick and angry as soon as he says it. He wants to scream and kick and take it the fuck back. Because that’s it, he’s done. He’s fucked it up, beautifully. So beautifully, there’s probably a song in it somewhere.

“Oh for…” Niall thumps a clenched fist against the wooden pillar of the porch. It shakes with his frustration. “Zayn. Mate. You are seriously fucked up. I don’t care if you’re gay. Or bisexual. Or if you fuck cats,” he pauses and wrinkles his nose. “Okay, actually, I do care if you fuck cats. That’s just gross. But, like. I’m not asking you to wear a rainbow wooly jumper and come to Pride parade holding my hand. We literally never have to do that. I don’t need you to immediately sort your sexuality out right the hell now. If you need time to get your head sorted, then it’s fine. I can wait. I just need to know that, at the end of the day, there’s something to wait _for._ ”

There’s a long and heavy silence. Thoughts and thoughts and thoughts and thoughts are flying round Zayn’s head. He can’t focus enough on any single one of them to come up with some kind of reply.

“I don’t…” he says. Words run out.

“Look,” Niall says, “I’m not gonna be a dick and put you on the spot. Just…just let me know, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Zayn says hoarsely. “Yeah, okay.”

Niall touches him briefly on the shoulder; a single bright spot of warmth in the frigid December air. “Hope you had a good Christmas, mate,” he says.

Zayn closes his eyes and listens to him walk away.

*-*-*-*

He stays up late that night; sits on his bed, fully clothed and watches the stars until his eyes burn. What he can’t get over is how _angry_ he felt when he told Niall he wasn’t gay. He doesn’t know who he’s angry with. What he does know is that, for the first time, that statement felt hollow. It felt like something that might be becoming a lie.

He doesn’t know what to do. What he does know is that he wants Niall. Wants to fuck him. Maybe wants to date him. What that makes him, he doesn’t have a fucking clue.

Maybe, Zayn thinks, maybe it’s time to stop worrying about that. It’s abundantly clear that if he doesn’t, Niall is going to walk out of his life. Being straight is worth a lot of things.

It’s not worth that.

*-*-*-*

The next morning, Zayn gets up early and goes into town. His Mum watches him go out the door with her mouth open in shock. Zayn grins at her. He feels good and it feels like the first time in weeks.

He goes to the tattoo parlour. He spends the Christmas money from his aunt and distracts himself from the needle by perfecting the lie he’s going to tell her when she asks him what he spent it on.

By the time he leaves, buzzing on left-over adrenaline, there’s a new tattoo etched into the skin of his shoulder. A London bus with the number 1 on the front of it. He ducks into the public loo at the bus station and snaps a photo. He sends it to Louis.

 _Making some choices_ , he writes.

 _!!!! !!! !!,_ he gets back. It makes him grin.

On the bus, he sends a text to Niall. _Coming over_ , it says.

_i'll comsider myself warned_

Zayn pauses for a moment and then clicks on the +44 number at the top. He hits ‘save to contacts’.

*-*-*-*

Niall opens the door in plaid flannel pyjama pants and a patterned wooly jumper. It’s clearly home-knitted. Christ.

Zayn, having knocked before he could let himself think about it, suddenly realises he has no idea what he’s actually going to say. Or, he knows the concepts. He’s just lacking the eloquence.

“Um,” he says, instead.

Niall looks like he’s fighting a grin. “Morning,” he says. “What’s up with you?”

“So here’s the thing,” Zayn says. “I’ve never heard you sing.”

Judging by the look on Niall’s face, that wasn’t what he was expecting to hear. To be fair, it wasn’t what Zayn was expecting to say, although he can’t be bothered with being surprised. After all, at the end of the day, for him, it always comes back to music.

“No,” Niall says, slowly. “No, I suppose you haven’t? That could, uh, that could be arranged?”

“I’d like that,” Zayn agrees. “I’d really like that.” He hopes for a brief, cowardly second that this might be all he has to say. But Niall just watches him, quietly expectant.

He forces himself to start up again. “So here’s the other thing,” he says, and he can barely get the words out because it feels like his heart had thumped it’s way out of his chest and is beating away merrily in his throat. There’s a weird ache under his sternum, in the space it used to be. “I don’t know,” he says, and it feels like it’s coming from far far away. “I don’t know what I like. And trying to figure it out scares the crap out of me. I think…I think I might have been wrong about some things for a long time, but I don’t actually know yet.”

It’s the most words he’s said in weeks. Niall still hasn’t said anything. Zayn feels a twinge of panic, but he’s not faced this and not faced it and not faced it and it hasn’t got him anywhere.

So he takes a deep breath and has one last go.

“I don’t know what I like,” he says again. “But I do know I like you.”

There’s a silence, brief and eternal, and then Niall’s grin is breaking free from his face and he’s laughing. He’s so fucking lovely Zayn can’t work out what to do. Luckily for him, just like he’s been doing from the start, Niall reaches out.

“Yeah, all right, mate,” he says, grinning and warm and ridiculous. “I got it. You want to come in?”

Zayn smiles back and steps forward. “Yeah,” he says, “actually, I do.”

It’s not resolved, it’s not perfect, it’s not anywhere close. But it is what it is. It’s a first step.

It’s a start.

*-*-*-*

_**Fin** _


End file.
